The ability of social media to alter our appearance to be more aesthetically pleasing reveals a dangerous trend. The pandemic has provided people, such as myself, an opportunity to renegotiate previous beauty and body standards. However, social media’s overarching presence has prevented this change from taking place for many of us.
This month marks one year since I, along with most members of the Mount Holyoke community, packed up my dorm and left campus due to COVID-19. Like most people, I have experienced grief, frustration, anger and instability since then. There have been countless days where I wake up with an acute, dull ache in my chest for no obvious reason until I remember, “Oh, right. Your life has been turned upside down because of a pandemic.”
Set to release in May 2021, Disney’s “Cruella,” based around the “101 Dalmations” antagonist Cruella de Vil, is the company’s newest addition to its series of live-action movies. The trailer promises a dark backstory for the classic villain, with actress Emma Stone’s voiceover declaring, “I am woman, hear me roar.”
In January 2021, the global community completed one full year with COVID-19. After months of harsh lockdowns in India and New Zealand and days of rising cases in the United Kingdom and the United States, 2021 is, hopefully, the light at the end of the tunnel. With 11 vaccines having been authorized across several countries and a record of 205 million of these vaccines being administered globally, the pandemic is slowly becoming history.
Unbiased content moderation has been in the limelight since former U.S. President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter and Facebook in early January. This action came directly from executives Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg of Twitter and Facebook, respectively. While they were well within their rights to ban Trump, their actions raised the concern that private companies could ban any individual they did not agree with. However, Dorsey and Zuckerberg have no desire to be in control of their platforms in that way.
As the spring semester came around this January, colleges across the U.S. opened their campuses to students. These institutions each laid out their own plans to combat the coronavirus pandemic’s spread and usher in their students safely. However, many colleges have seen uncontrollable case numbers in just the first few weeks, reflecting their inadequate COVID-19 measures. In light of this, Mount Holyoke’s gradual reopening policies and COVID-19 measures have proven to be comparatively far more successful.
When winter break ended this year, many students were excited to come back to campus for the first time since it closed last spring. The campus had reopened, though students had to agree to some restrictions for the sake of the community’s health, such as staying within a 10-mile radius of campus, biweekly COVID-19 testing, mask-wearing, social distancing and certain dining hall restrictions. MHC announced most of these restrictions early and clarified them in messages sent to students and families. But one thing that was never advertised were the changes to the meal plan.
The word “populism” is often synonymous with dictatorial regimes and authoritarian states. Adolf Hitler used the ideology of populism to carry out various anti-Semitic operations in the early 20th century. Joseph Stalin used his communist foundation and the ideology of populism as a way to justify his purges of and distrust in the bourgeois class. Despite this violent history and regardless of the increased number of democracies in the 21st century, populism has only increased in influence.
In January 2021, a high court in India made a startling sexual assault ruling, declaring that groping without skin-to-skin contact does not constitute sexual assault. The case has garnered outrage across the country, drawing attention to the unresolved problem of sexual abuse and rape against women and minors. Instituting a ruling like this undermines the progress that activists have made regarding children’s and women’s right to safety in India and bolsters an already rampant culture of sexual crimes within the nation.
On Jan. 21, history was made in the Oval Office when Biden signed 17 executive actions on his first day as president. Landmark decisions include rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and repealing the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” setting an optimistic tone for supporters of Biden’s presidency. Moreover, after a turbulent four years for Indigenous rights and environmental activists, the nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland as secretary of the interior, making her the first Native American Cabinet member, and former Secretary of State John Kerry as the special climate envoy were seen to be major wins for these overlooked communities. These voices and protests were also recognized by the Biden administration when the Keystone XL pipeline project was finally blocked in one of the executive orders.
January 31, 2021
To whom it may concern,
My name’s Mariam and I’m a first-year low-income student who is on campus this semester. While speaking with some other low-income students on campus these past few weeks, I realized that many of us have been struggling to acquire adequate personal protective equipment (i.e. disposable face masks, rubber gloves, etc.) and cleaning products (i.e. paper towels, disinfectant spray, etc.).
Last week, students received an email from Residential Life stating, “Cleaning materials will be provided for you in all bathrooms starting tomorrow, January 26, 2021 or you can purchase your own. If you need assistance purchasing materials, please consider accessing the Safety Net Fund.”
While the Safety Net Fund does present one point of access for these materials, there are still some things to consider.
MHC has a limited amount of Safety Net funding available each semester that could hypothetically go towards acquiring personal protective equipment. However, there are a couple of drawbacks that come with this.
First, many of the first-year, first-generation and low-income students I have spoken to are simply not aware that these funds are available to them, nor do they understand how to access them.
Secondly, students may hesitate to tap into this funding for things like personal protective equipment when they have more urgent needs to be met. One portion of the Safety Net Fund application form reads, “Funding is not guaranteed, and students may be awarded less than the full amount requested. Each funding application is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The Safety Net funds are available on a first-come, first-served basis until the fund is depleted.”
Additionally, the most recent “Dean’s Corner” newsletter reiterated that.
From this, I understand that I would be able to reapply for Safety Net funding later on. I also understand that I am less likely to receive the amount that I need every additional time that I ask. As a result, I am anxious to request funding for my immediate needs (read: personal protective equipment), lest something financially significant come up later on in the semester. Other students might echo this sentiment. I currently know of students who are planning to request funds for things like winter gear while still struggling to locate personal protective equipment.
Finally, there will undoubtedly be a delay between the time it takes students to request Safety Net funding and the time it takes the funding to hit their hands. This translates to a longer amount of time during which students do not have adequate personal protective equipment on campus. Any barrier toward the distribution of these materials is not only an issue of access but a risk to the entire campus community in the face of a global pandemic.
However, there are a few potential solutions to this problem. Another MHC first-year with whom I recently spoke suggested that disposable face masks and/or other materials be made available for pick-up at the Carr Lab during testing. This is an excellent idea, as it would be an effective and low-effort way to make sure these materials quickly make it into the hands of those who need them most. One institution here in Massachusetts provided a friend of mine with a set of 50 disposable face masks (which lasted her almost the entire semester) upon her arrival. They did the same for all students who were on campus in the fall. If MHC could replicate this model, even if only on a smaller, need-based scale, it would make the campus safer for everyone.
We have brought a significant number of students back on campus during a pandemic. With that, we need to make sure that they have access to adequate resources to live and thrive here safely. If we are going to “open the gates,” then we must do it with caution.
Best,
Mariam Keita ’24
Author’s Note: An earlier version of this letter appeared in the form of an email that was sent out to members of SGA, FLIP, Health Services and Mount Holyoke admins.
2021 is shaping up to be an eventful year, but one unexpected development was the GameStop short squeeze. After finding out that gaming retailer GameStop had the most shorted — or bet against — stock on the market, a group of Reddit users organized themselves and individually bought GameStop stock en masse. They drove up the cost of stock, forcing hedge funds that had bet GameStop stock would decrease in value and had hence borrowed stock to sell at a low price. This practice is known as “short selling” — buying borrowed stock back at a much higher value than anticipated, which created the “squeeze.”
In recent years, the popularity of the shopping app Depop has skyrocketed, and its trendy, Instagram-like approach to shopping has resulted in an explosion of thrift resellers. Many middle- and upper-class individuals with storefronts on the app shop at thrift stores in low-income communities, buy trendy, good-quality pieces in bulk and resell them for three or four times the price. With the right lighting and fashion blog posing, a T-shirt that cost a few dollars from Goodwill warrants a $20 price tag on Depop. Though the mainstream popularity of thrifting is certainly a win for sustainability advocates, thrift reselling for multiple times the original price of an item from a store particularly catered to lower income communities is unethical and indicative of a flagrant lack of class consciousness in the sustainability movement.
By Nina Larbi ’22
Op-Ed Editor
Released on Nov. 24, Vogue’s December 2020 issue has sparked controversy, as the cover features British singer Harry Styles wearing a Gucci dress. Conservative commentators like Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro have voiced their disapproval of Styles’ appearance, claiming that wearing a dress is an outright attack on masculinity. Various people have come to Styles’ defense, asserting that gender roles are restrictive and clothing is genderless.
As important as it is to have these conversations, I feel as though this happens every six months. Harry Styles will wear one skirt in a photoshoot or paint his nails, and media outlets and social media platforms will shoot out article after article and post after post on how he is either a traitor to masculinity or how he is the vanguard of breaking gender norms — all for one measly skirt. Whether you fall into one of those two camps — or neither — Styles has been chosen as the face of “gender-neutral fashion,” as affirmed by Priya Elan in The Guardian. Though he is a major public figure who dresses in a manner that challenges traditional Western masculinity, centering him as the sole forerunner of gender neutrality in fashion is dismissive of the various people of color that are doing the same.
To answer Shapiro and Owens’ rhetorical questions on the fate of Western masculinity, men have been wearing skirts since antiquity. The link between pants and masculinity may be due to the necessity of divided legs for riding, but the strong association of the two was cemented during the 19th century in the West. Traditional masculinity hasn’t been traditional for very long. Moreover, there has been a myriad of people who have challenged conventional masculinity since, like Prince and David Bowie.
The fashion world itself specifically owes much to LGBTQ+ artists of color. In the 1990 documentary “Paris is Burning,” director Jennie Livingston recorded the 1980s New York City ballroom culture and the involvement of Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ people in the scene. “Paris is Burning” provided insight into a community that was disparaged for its race, gender, sexuality and class, and has been recognized as culturally significant by the Library of Congress. The documentary’s depiction of ballroom culture heavily inspired the popular television show “Pose,” which has been met with critical acclaim. Ballroom culture and the window “Paris is Burning” provided for mainstream audiences has roused people. The fashion industry is no exception.
Though clothes are highly gendered modes of expression, fashion has always pushed the envelope regarding gender nonconformity. The Met Gala is certainly a place where gender norms can be challenged, as it is meant to be a spectacle put on by celebrities and designers for the fashion critique of the masses.
The 2019 Met Gala pushed a bit more with the theme “camp.” Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, picked the theme herself, along with the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, Andrew Bolton. Celebrities showed up in a variety of colorful and over-the-top costumes. But, as Lena Waithe put it, “Black drag queens invented camp.” She continued, “Pepper LaBeija, Benny Ninja, RuPaul, all these pioneers. … I really wanted to pay tribute to them and all that they did for the culture. … They started this whole ‘camp’ thing by being over-the-top.” Despite this long historical precedent, camp was still considered groundbreaking in 2019, as well as Styles’ dress a year later.
Styles’ Gucci dress certainly got more attention than is warranted in 2020, even if he is the first solo man on a Vogue cover. The Vogue issue praised him as “revolutionary” when he and many others have worn skirts and dresses before.
Why is it that when Styles does it, he’s radical? Various artists of color similarly challenge gender norms but are met with heavy criticism and little praise. To be clear, Styles isn’t intentionally profiting off of femininity to give his work more intrigue. In an interview with The Guardian, he answered such claims: “Am I sprinkling in nuggets of sexual ambiguity to try and be more interesting? No.” He then went on to say, “I want things to look a certain way. Not because it makes me look gay, or it makes me look straight, or it makes me look bisexual, but because I think it looks cool.”
Though he is not deliberately wearing dresses to market himself as LGBTQ+ adjacent, Styles’ brand of gender nonconformity is the most easily accepted by people because he is a white cisgender man. Many artists of color, LGBTQ+ or not, are told that they are “doing too much” when they adopt gender neutrality and subcultures like ballroom as part of their image. Prince, Jaden Smith, Janet Jackson, Janelle Monae, Young Thug and Lil Nas X have all been branded over-the-top as if they are challenging gender roles too much for their image choices. Still, Styles’ ruffled dress somehow seems to be the perfectly palatable type of nonconformity. Young Thug wore a similar pale blue ruffled dress on his “JEFFERY” mixtape cover, but it didn’t create nearly as much buzz as Styles’ Gucci number.
I am happy to see that people are growing increasingly supportive of Styles’ manner of dress, but I also want to see other artists, the ones I mentioned earlier, receive that same praise. Rather than having a narrow type of “acceptable” gender nonconformity, we should seek to expand and include artists of color and their nonconforming presentation. We need to recognize the impact that people of color have had on fashion and, rather than appropriate, give credit where credit is due.
By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23
Staff Writer
By May 5, 2019, I finalized my decision to enroll at Mount Holyoke College, a gender-diverse liberal arts college in western Massachusetts. When my friends and relatives asked me where I would be starting school, a lengthy response would inevitably find its way out of my mouth. There was a need to clarify where and what this little-known college was. Eyebrows raised, people questioned why I chose what they might call an “all women’s” or “girl’s” college. Why an unheard-of liberal arts college? The raised eyebrows were common and still are. This negligence toward historically women's colleges by both the general public and college rankings reflects the increasing need for more of such institutions.
I've seen this negligence reflected in people I know, both in the United States and back home in India. When I stayed with my cousin in Boston during the break before arriving at college, neither he nor his friends had ever heard of Mount Holyoke. They didn't know of the Seven Sisters either. I've often been questioned on the ranking of my college. The college rankings on different websites such as U.S. News reflect what appears to be only partial knowledge of these colleges. The lower ranking of Mount Holyoke amid the broader college culture has often left me confused. Currently, Mount Holyoke is ranked 34 in the list of national liberal arts colleges created by U.S. News.
This has often led me to think that the rankings of HWCs in the broader college culture, including public perception, were determined by the fact that they were aimed at offering women and, later, transgender and nonbinary folks, an education. Did the fact that no cisgender men were walking around their campuses make them somehow less appealing to the masses? If this is the case, it turns away from the realities of inequality that still exist for women, trans and nonbinary individuals and the importance of empowering them and providing them with an education in a safe space.
The Seven Sister colleges, for example, were established in the 19th century to provide women with educational opportunities equal to the then male-only Ivy Leagues. These colleges have continued to offer their students a sense of empowerment, drive and community outside the pressures of a hierarchy determined by cisgender men. For instance, Bryn Mawr College President Kimberly Cassidy, in a U.S. News article on gender gaps in STEM, charts how gender stereotypes have led to an “unequal distribution of mentors and lab opportunities.” HWCs can offer their students opportunities outside these disparities and develop a “built-in sense of belonging, with plentiful female role models and female-majority workgroups,” Cassidy said.
Even today, there is still a very prevalent hierarchy that seats the cisgender man at the top. There remains a need for safe spaces of education and empowerment for people of different gender identities.
Isshita Fauzdar ’23 emphasized that there is still a strong need for HWCs today and their exclusion from rankings is unfair given their rich histories. “If the earliest women's colleges weren't founded in the mid-19th century, then we might not even have had the opportunity to attend any higher academic institution[s] today,” Fauzdar said. With this in mind, she encouraged more people to attend and recognize institutions that have “a solitary purpose of empowering students with a rigorous education that might not have been accessible to all otherwise.”
The incessant questioning of or indifference to the need for HWCs sidelines their intent and the fact that they offer educations as meaningful as the colleges cisgender men attend. When people keep asking, “Why a women’s college?” — if they are even aware of their existence — it proves that they do not understand the need for such spaces in our society. This reflects the prevalent and embedded hierarchy in our society. No, patriarchy is not gone, and yes, we still need colleges that are affirming and safe spaces. I have chosen to attend Mount Holyoke as a conscious choice, not because I had to settle for it. A gender-diverse women’s college has given me an empowering, quality education filled with rich traditions experienced alongside a bold and driven community. These colleges deserve more recognition and need to increase in number so that we can create a society in which gender inequalities are recognized and combatted.
By Kaveri Pillai ’23
Staff Writer
Binge-watching media content has become a household norm during the lockdown, and with the much-needed time off for Thanksgiving break, many people got the opportunity to watch the latest season of the Netflix series “The Crown.” Season Four, the last season for the Olivia Coleman-headed cast, welcomes two iconic women of the ’70s: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Lady Diana Spencer. Needless to say, I had prepared myself for a week of endless drama and shocking revelations about the British royal family. However, after days of watching “The Crown,” one thing stood out. While the mistreatment of Lady Diana as a member of the royal family has been widely publicized for decades now, the negative representation of Thatcher and the failure of her tenure is stressed in the course of the 10-episode season. This rather skewed representation of the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom reveals a dark truth about the media: Conservative politics are hardly ever tolerated in TV shows and movies. Even if right-wing politics are showcased in this form of media, it is done poorly and in a way that undermines the entire conservative ideology.
The lack of representation of conservative politics is harmful to the public. Because people rely on works of fiction for the truth about our reality, shows like “The Crown” have a moral responsibility to represent the truth. The creator of the show, Peter Morgan, has never denied taking artistic license when it comes to portraying the world’s most famous royal family while simultaneously emphasizing his devotion toward getting some of the facts right. Nevertheless, getting Lady Diana’s iconic wedding dress and Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis right cannot compensate for bending the historical and political truth Morgan is responsible for portraying.
For many of the viewers, my grandparents included, the 1970s and 80s are decades that they vividly remember. The Falkland War in 1982 and the Right to Buy Housing Act of 1980 are etched into the minds of the people who lived in the U.K. at that time. The fifth episode of season four is completely devoted to the impact of Thatcher’s policies and the massive increase in unemployment, something that seems unusual for a drama like “The Crown.”
After years of showcasing the intricacies of the royal family structure, “The Crown” detoured while sensationalizing Thatcher’s reign. The episode narrates the true story of a Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan who wishes to speak to the queen in order to voice his concerns about the deteriorating country under Thatcher’s rule. While this incident did occur, the representation of the bureaucracy and the government’s inefficiency was selectively portrayed to undermine the work Thatcher did for the U.K. The Right to Buy Act successfully allowed tenants to buy the council houses at a large discount, increasing the national homeownership rate by 15 percent, yet the scenes in the show focused solely on citizens of lower incomes living in dilapidated council houses. A noble endeavor is undermined when Thatcher’s name is dragged through the mud.
In November, Vulture noted that Gillian Anderson’s portrayal of Thatcher in the show reflected the animosity toward the prime minister’s conservatism as well. The over-the-top accent work went beyond mimicry or character impersonation — it presented a caricature of Thatcher to a 21st-century audience that showed the Iron Lady as rude, uptight and hated by many.
Political analysts have countlessly voiced criticism regarding Thatcher’s administration, which is understandable when one analyzes the populism that surrounded her campaign. However, movies like “Vice,” which portrayed Christian Bale and Sam Rockwell as Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush, respectively, echo the same liberal bias the film industry consciously perpetuates. By glamorizing Cheney and Bush’s row with alcoholism and their post-9/11 conflict with the Middle East out of proportion, the film’s creators dangerously create an image for the public that conservative politics is a nasty business.
The biased reporting of politics threatens the integrity of fictional representation and media commitment to showing the truth. This liberal-minded interpretation of politics has unfortunately seeped into news outlets as well, with a Gallup poll finding that 66 percent of Americans think the news does a bad job of separating factual reporting from opinion. Various news outlets, like The Washington Post, discuss Obama’s presidency as if his worst controversy was a tan suit, rather than the impact of some of his detrimental programs like Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed for a dangerous amount of firearms sales. Headlines like these highlight the media’s favoritism when it comes to liberals.
Thatcher is just one political leader who has been reduced to an ineffective and ruthless woman by the film industry, showcasing that the improper portrayal of conservative political leaders across many media forms is a larger issue. With this misguided motive to homogenize politics and to make every issue a partisan issue, we are being anything but democratic and undermining the achievements of leaders like President Abraham Lincoln and President Ronald Reagan who helped the country as conservative leaders.
The last two seasons of “The Crown” can only depict the fresher political wounds the U.K. has had to bear, and the public anticipates the portrayal of national issues like the London bombing attacks and Brexit. One can only hope that truth prevails and conservatism is given a second chance.
Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22
By Kaveri Pillai ’23
Staff Writer
With over 7 billion people engaging with approximately 7,000 languages, the world we live in is becoming more diverse. Differences in faith, religion and socioeconomic status create a sense of organic solidarity in which every individual on Earth has a unique role to play. The duty to unite and establish harmony in this pool of heterogeneity comes with an enormous amount of responsibility.
It is inevitable that, with so much variety, one starts to question their authentic self. Genetic composition, family and names — these three elements help determine one’s personal history and co-constitute one another. The name-giving process has deep roots in culture and self-identity. Unfortunately, with the rise of globalization and this incessant need to create uniformity, we are losing the authenticity of names, especially the proper ways to pronounce them.
With a myriad of ethnicities worldwide, it is understandable that one cannot attain knowledge of every group and every culture. However, this cannot be used to justify the sheer ignorance that is present while attempting to understand the importance of names. The Namkaran ceremony in Hindu rituals is a symbol of the celebration of birth with the name-giving tradition. Astrological charts are aligned to produce a name so prosperous that it is a gift from God to the child who is about to take their first steps into the world. So when Republican Senator David Perdue intentionally mispronounced Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ name, he didn’t just manage to show to the world how deeply immersed he is in his Anglicized racism — he robbed Harris of her identity.
By adding the culturally deteriorating phrase, “I don’t know. Whatever,” to get a few cheap laughs from the political rally, Perdue diminished the value of a Namkaran ceremony in which the name given to the child represents the auspicious nature of their arrival and how prosperous their journey and identity will be.
This particular example from last month echoes the historical Western ideal of accepted names, which we still follow today. What might have started with the wave of colonization and the degradation of people as slaves has slowly transitioned into the 21st century McDonaldization realm in which Starbucks will invariably print “Karen” on my coffee cup. It’s not just the pure laziness of refusing to improve or be receptive that bothers thousands of people, but that this belief of “usual” and “unusual” names is so deeply-rooted in a majority of people that raises concerns.
Colonization marked the plundering of resources, manpower and even native identity. Pre Emancipation, enslaved Africans were given names by slave owners in the United States that were supposedly easier to pronounce and identified them as slaves. Indian workers pre-independence were given first names recorded in public records to reaffirm their status as people who didn’t even have the right to keep their own names. This transition from mispronouncing given names to completely obliterating them has repercussions in today’s world, too.
Xiaohui Xu ’24 said, “As a Chinese [person], there is a reason why I use an English name instead of my given Chinese name. I know it’s hard for English speakers to pronounce the Chinese name right since the ‘x’ phonetic doesn’t exist in the English language. For the sake of convenience, I’ve decided that for the school[’s] purposes, I will use ‘Amanda,’ which is my English name.”
Moreover, not putting effort into accurately pronouncing names is not a problem solely faced on an international level. Saee Chitale ’22 said, “All my life, I’ve struggled with people back at home pronouncing my name improperly. Every time a person has read out a list of people and have paused, it has invariably been my name that has created this confusion.” Sadly, the issue of mispronunciation reinforces the Western idea of “normal” names as the uniform setting that all ethnic groups refer to, regardless of where you are from.
Often, children of nursery school age in countries like India use names like “Sam” and “Molly” while writing about villagers in their country. While this might seem to be a result of immaturity or even innocence, it is important to acknowledge that this idea of “accepted” names creeps into children’s thinking from an early age. This standard diminishes the stories and even the existence of people who simply don’t operate in the restricted Western world.
Mount Holyoke College’s implementation of name recordings on Moodle, our primary academic platform, helps tackle the problem of name pronunciation. It allows professors and students the opportunity to respect others by addressing them accurately. While this might be a small step toward shattering the power dynamic that dictates what is or is not accepted, the world needs to become more aware of cultures that go beyond their narrow circle of traditions to fulfill that responsibility of creating harmony.
By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23
Staff Writer
As November comes around annually, I prepare myself for a time of celebration and festivity. In the time of this pandemic, Diwali is a light of hope, an opportunity to get out of the drudgery of online classes and celebrate. However, as I partake in this celebration, there is a lingering thought in the corner of my mind asking me if I am celebrating with awareness. As the holiday season engulfs us, we must rethink the ways in which we celebrate and ensure that we are doing so with a sense of sustainability and responsibility to health and the environment.
Traditionally, Diwali is celebrated by lighting “diyas” or oil lamps. However, since around the 1940s, the rampant usage of fireworks to mark the occasion has made its way into the festival.
While growing up, my grandfather would buy sacks of fireworks, called firecrackers or just "crackers" in India, for all of us to celebrate, and Diwali would be filled with the noise and smoke of firecrackers burning all over the city. However, today, caught amid the climate change crisis, we must pause to reconsider these crackers’ place in Diwali celebrations. Crackers are pollutants, harmful to both our health and the environment, and to purchase them is to bolster an industry of fireworks factories that employ child labor.
Diwali fireworks have led to a 30-40 percent increase in recorded breathing problems. The fireworks’ chemicals contain “a mixture of sulfur-coal compounds, traces of heavy metals, and other toxic chemicals or gases.” All of these lead to breathing problems, and bursting the crackers in such a rampant manner puts many people, especially the elderly and vulnerable, at risk.
Additionally, amid a pandemic, we must realize how bursting crackers demonstrates our privilege and negligence toward those who are more at risk for health issues. Along with harmful smoke, the crackers also produce noise pollution, detrimental to both people and animals. This pollution leads to a sense of anxiety, sleep disturbance and, according to The Indian Express, “asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, allergic rhinitis, lower respiratory tract infections, and lung cancers.”
In light of the pandemic, some state governments in India passed a ban on the usage of crackers for Diwali. However, while the government called for the ban, it was not entirely carried out. According to The Hindu, “bursting of firecrackers could be heard across Delhi and its neighbouring areas on Diwali night even though a ban was imposed on its sale and use in the national capital region in view of rising air pollution and COVID-19 pandemic.” Hindu groups, including many Bharatiya Janata Party members, argued that the bursting of firecrackers was an essential part of the festival and should not be banned.
However, caught in the middle of a pandemic and facing global warming, we must rethink how we can do justice to both festivities as well as environmental consciousness. We must work to celebrate festivals like Diwali with these dangers in mind. Given that fireworks are only a recent addition, perhaps we can return to lighting diyas as the main attraction. We can draw rangolis, make sweets and, in a safe manner, come together with friends and family, preserving the essence of the festival. After all, Diwali is the celebration of good over evil, and we must not forget that even in the excitement of the celebration.
Additionally, while evaluating if the Diwali celebration is staying true to its intent, we must be aware of the horrors of the firecracker industry bolstered on this day. The firecracker industry in India carries a history of child labor. Young children were used for rolling fireworks and stuffing explosives into them because they had tiny hands and fingers that would ensure precision. Working in unsafe conditions, the children’s jobs expose them to harsh chemicals, injuries and lifelong health issues. While there has been a decline in child labor in the industry, we cannot neglect its presence and history. When we burst these crackers in celebration, we are also bolstering these young children’s trauma and suffering. This act of celebration is definitely not in line with the intent to celebrate Diwali and honor the triumph of good over evil.
Right now, we have an opportunity to reevaluate the ways we celebrate Diwali and other festivals, keeping in mind an awareness of the times we are in and the changes that we and the environment are going through. It is an opportunity for us to review some of our practices while staying true to the festivals and their intent.
Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22
By Nina Larbi ’22
Op-Ed Editor
Climate change is the slow apocalypse already underway. The planet has warmed 1 degree Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, threatening mass extinctions and natural disasters like wildfires and floods. Awareness of the dire situation of the planet has led to increasing environmental consciousness in highly developed countries with a history of mass consumption like the United States. People are sitting down and asking themselves, “How can I reduce my carbon footprint?” beyond just turning the lights and water faucet off when they are not in use.
In response to the pursuit of a smaller carbon footprint, various “ethical and sustainable” brands have established themselves, making their way to consumers via social media advertisements and targeted articles on lifestyle websites. Despite the clear benefit ethical and sustainable products provide, we cannot buy our way out of a global environmental crisis. Climate change requires both top-down and bottom-up levels of change, and not just with consumer products.
Overconsumption is directly leading us to impending environmental collapse, whether it be fossil fuels releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet or consumer goods with externalities. Cheap goods, like $15 t-shirts, exchange a low price tag for poor working conditions and pollution at various points along the supply chain. In this way, both the environment and workers are paying the price for cheap goods.
In over-consuming countries like the U.S., consumption is built into people’s lifestyles. Gasoline-powered cars, smartphones, toilets that flush down a stupidly large amount of water and the ubiquity of rarely recycled plastic packaging are parts of our lives. This consumption can be reduced by using hybrid or electric cars and energy-efficient light bulbs and buying a toilet that has varying flushing settings. But these modifications are either nominal in their impact or absurdly expensive for most people.
Regarding lifestyle goods, consumers do have more choice and can pick a sustainable option that is neither incrementalist nor inordinately expensive. Clothes and shoes are the easiest to swap out for sustainable alternatives because they don’t require in-depth research, installation or maintenance, unlike other products. Thus, a crop of “ethical” and “sustainable” brands like Everlane, Ecoalf and Veja have gained popularity, each promising a guilt-free product that neither harms workers nor excessively pollutes the environment.
Despite the attractiveness of such products, companies are still companies, and they want to sell people products. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing tactic that makes products seem more environmentally friendly than they are; for example, using the color green on packaging and advertising that a product has “natural” qualities despite there being no clear definition of the word. Blue-washing is the formation and heavy advertisement of an agreement to comply with the United Nations Global Compact, a non-binding corporate commitment to sustainability.
Brands will also proclaim their mission to work on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals without any evidence of doing so. There are ways to check companies’ sustainability commitments, but all require synthesizing publicly available data and statements, which are often sparse or nonexistent regarding labor standards and pollution. Popular ethical and sustainable brand Everlane’s data was synthesized by the Australian application Good on You, and they found no evidence that Everlane pays a living wage in its supply chain or makes conscious efforts to reduce textile and water waste.
Ultimately, green consumption is a business-as-usual model with a leaf on it. Even if companies aren’t lying about their commitments to sustainability, feigned sustainability pressures individuals to bear the burden of global environmental destruction through the singular freedom of consumer choice rather than holding large corporations and governments responsible for causing and allowing climate catastrophe. Cultural awareness of sustainability is beneficial, but it does little to remove the problem at its root, which is lax and avoidable environmental and economic policy that permits corporations to completely wring the Earth dry of its resources and mistreat workers.
